Packaging machines capable of applying labels to cartons or other containers have been in use for many years. In general, they perform satisfactorily, applying labels or other sheets of indicia to containers at a reasonably rapid rate and in accordance with the range of accuracy demanded by the operation.
Marketing strategies in some areas, such as the beverage field, for example, require a coupon to be placed in the carton as part of a contest or lottery. A coupon must be in every carton, to enable each purchaser of a carton to obtain a coupon. This means that it must be located in all cartons at substantially the same point. If it is not, it would be an indication that the coupon is either being placed at locations in the carton slightly progressively spaced from each other, signifying that at some point in the packaging operation a carton will pass through the application station without receiving a coupon, or is failing to be applied to each carton. In either case the coupon application operation would be unsatisfactory.
This type of operation is especially difficult to carry out in the beverage industry because of the extremely high speeds at which cartons are sent through the packaging machines. In such an operation coupons would be applied to a carton blank before the blank has been wrapped around the beverage containers to form a carton. Because of the high speeds involved and the need to attach a coupon to each carton blank, apparatus which utilizes a simple rotating arm to grip and deposit a coupon would not be satisfactory. Such equipment does not have the degree of reliability required by the operation because the initial contact of the coupon with the substrate is necessarily at an angle to the substrate due to the arc through which the coupon gripping means travels. It would be more reliable if the coupon could be presented to the blank in parallel relationship to the blank so that the coupon fully engages the blank at initial contact. Such an operation with presently available equipment would not, however, be able to keep up with the speeds of modern packaging machines.
It would be desirable to have an economical but effective coupon placer available to use in the manner described.